Has elon musk called anyone a pedo yet?
I mean, I thought the thumbnail was a Fleshlight.
No talk of passengers, so at the very least one person is missing, but up to 5. Also they have no other submersible that can reach that depth. From an insurance stance, that sounds like a massive liability risk to undertake, not to mention it’s just unwise.
So, in the live feed the BBC has going, there’s a post suggesting that a group of “explorers” were apparently on board based on one of them’s Facebook feed, so it’s safe to say they probably had the full passenger set on there.
Which means they gross $750,000 per 8 hour trip. They should have a recovery vessel at those prices.
One of the other posts in the feed makes it sound like they only do it a handful of times a year, and that cost is covering a multi-day excursion since they have to wait for conditions to be right. Still, no excuse to not have contingencies, but I think their take gets eaten into a fair bit more than the raw math would suggest.
I wager they don’t have a recovery vessel because they have people sign contracts only allowing arbitration.
I wouldn’t be surprised. But, I suspect there’s also a factor of just implausibility. Apparently, the main vessel they use is “experimental”, so it may just literally be impossible to have a recovery vessel without being a literal government.
My money’s on this being the result of someone ignoring the “hey, these are not good conditions” warnings.
Not just ‘experimental’. This thing looks like something you’d find on a backyard engineering website. Some of it’s functionality is accessed with an offbrand video game controller.
The bit with the contract is @ 2:40:
An experimental submersible vessel that has not been approved or certified by any regulatory body and could result in physical injury, disability, emotional trauma or death.
There was some speculation the pressure vessel could have imploded, due to it being made out of thick fiber glass, which is like glass wherein any tiny imperfection under pressure can cause the entire vessel to break. This is why other pressure vessels are made out of stainless steel, they’re easier to inspect.
If the vessel didn’t implode, there’s a decent chance it’s floating on the surface, but lost. This is because the ballast for these subs is heavy metal attached via electromagnet. Should anything go wrong, the magnets can be disengaged, and the sub with resurface.
Here’s hoping it’s lost and can be found, imploding is a horrifying way to go, albeit a quick one.
And their navigation is dependent on text messages from the support ship they charter. Oh, dear.
The CBS guy read aloud part of the thing he had to sign when he rode on it.
And the video is horrifying on so many levels…
“Everything else can fail. Your thrusters can go, your lights can go and you’ll be safe.”***********
Aged like milk.
According to the CEO the whole business isn’t even profitable. They spent over a million on gas alone. At least this jerryrigged contraption sinking is the most effective way for their company to stop shitting up the atmosphere for the whims of a few rich people.
Daily Mail says the CEO of the OceanGate company is one of the people aboard.
Those are some dead rich folks
edit: you’d have to be suicidal to ride in this thing, look at this vid
Just listened a podcast about the deepest ever submarine rescue. It’s pretty much all hands on deck worldwide when a submarine goes missing. Atleast then it was
This sounds interesting - what’s the podcast?
“All of these submersibles have been kind of janky,” Pogue said.
I need them to find the submersible for my own mental sake. The list of phobias that this is checking off is too much. Claustrophobia, thalassophobia, mazeophobia…
BBC’s also got a live feed going for this.
Apparently, the sub’s supposed to have a suite of systems to more or less warn the pilot if things are looking dicey, so hopefully this is a communications problem and not something worse.
We need c/nottheonion for stuff like this…
